Learn How to Fix a Slow Computer Permanently & Easily [2018 Updated]

Last updated: October 8, 2018 at 0:16 am by Adam Dominik

All computers, Windows powered and Mac computers slow down with age and usage. However, these are all software related issues and not hardware related at all. In this article you will learn how to quickly resolve the most frequently common and occurring computing issues which cause your computer to begin running so slow.

The best 10 ways on how to make your computer faster are listed below. Some methods work better than others, but these methods are all ones you can easily do yourself without any expert computing knowledge. However, for those that do not want to tinker with their computer and want to leave it to the experts, then I highly recommend the computer optimization tool: PC Health Advisor. Click here to read more about it and why it is currently the best Windows software tool guaranteed to make your computer run faster. It has everything that is required to restore computer performance.

The 10 Most Common Reasons for Your Windows 10 64-bit Computer is Running So Slow:

Your hard drive is full resulting in insufficient space for virtual memory

Full hard drives always equates to zero virtual memory. Virtual memory is used by all software programs when system RAM is full and busy. Basically your hard drive is used for additional RAM. When it is full, additional RAM is unavailable, resulting in painfully slow computer performance.

How to fix it: Clean up your hard drive.

This is generally easy for the most part, but cleaning and removing files that can be safely removed is the tricky bit. Sometimes removing one thing can prevent another piece of software from correctly loading or running. Once you have removed files or programs you no longer use and you know are safe to remove, the next safest and best option is to use PC Health Advisor, the program I mentioned at the beginning of this article. PC Health Advisor cleans up your entire computer, the easy and the hard stuff that has to go to improve computer performance. It knows what to clean (remove) and what not to clean at all. Learn more about PC Health Advisor!

Your using Windows Vista: Worst performing Windows operating system of all time

Here are the top 3 reasons why Windows Vista is the worst performing OS of all time:

Hogs Memory

Constant Hard Drive Activity

Un-Optimized code: Slower not Faster

Hogs Memory

Vista had a new style of memory management, unique to itself which Microsoft introduced. The idea was why not allow Vista to use all of the memory that is currently available for free use. Free memory is in essence wasted memory. Except this made exactly zero memory available for every other program!

Constant Hard Drive Activity

Windows Vista is too big and inefficient to load itself and run programs without making tremendous use of the swap file and other disk based storage. This drastically reduces system performance as the hard disk drive has to constantly juggle Vista accessing it and loading software.

Un-Optimized code: Slower not Faster

Microsoft added so many changes and features to Windows Vista that the code got huge and messy. Vista has over 50 million lines of code, 10 million more than XP.

How to fix it: Update Windows Vista to Windows 7 at the very least.

Too many software programs get loaded during boot up, chewing up your system’s memory and resources

When your computer boots up, it goes through a list of programs to load and run in the background as soon as the Windows desktop is displayed. This list can get quite large over time, resulting in a large amount of software programs running in the background chewing away at your computer’s RAM drastically reducing system performance.

How to fix it: Manage your Startup Items using msconfig.

Built into Windows is a special tool called the “Microsoft System Configuration Utility” or simply “msconfig.” Msconfig can also be used to ensure that your computer boots faster and crashes less.

Click the “Start” button, then type “msconfig” in the search box and then either press enter on your keyboard or double-click on the “msconfig” program that appears in the search results.

Run “msconfig” and un-check all the software programs you don’t need loaded and ready to go the moment your computer first starts-up.

If this sounds too complicated for you, just take a look into PC Health Advisor and let it get a faster computer for you in a couple of minutes.

There is far too much running in the background

This is one of the most common reasons why your computer would experience performance drops and ultimately being slow, unresponsive and sluggish. This is closely related to the previous mentioned point.

How to fix it: Manage resource intensive programs using Task Manager

Disable software you don’t frequently use using “msconfig”, or open up Task Manager (ctrl+alt+delete) and select the processes tab, from there select each process that is using far too much memory and then click end process to regain RAM and resources.

Make sure anti-virus programs are not scanning your computer in the background. They are notorious for chewing up system resources and RAM, a little more detail about resource heavy programs later in this article.

Did you know that PC Health Advisor can shut-down processes and programs unnecessarily slowing your computer down? Learn more about PC Health Advisor.

You are running programs which are notorious for being un-optimized for Windows and chew system resources

iTunes would have to be the biggest culprit. A close second is Norton. These two programs are so resource heavy they dramatically drag down computer performance the moment they are installed.

Firefox is another one. Firefox has a nasty habit of not dumping memory each time you close a tab. The more tabs you open and close, the more tabs hiding in the background eating up RAM and other computer resources.

Other software titles to keep an eye out for:

McAffee

BitDefender

How to fix it: Get rid of these top four programs or at least stop using them.

Your computer’s hard drive has never been de-fragmented

When a computer’s hard drive is fragmented, that means files are placed all over the entire hard drive, not in a neat orderly fashion. So when you load programs to run, the computer has to find all these files across the entire hard drive. When a hard drive is de-fragmented, this means all files on the hard drive have been sorted neatly in an orderly fashion, making it far easier and quicker for your computer to find all the required files to quickly load programs.

You are running old and outdated software drivers

Always keep up to date with all updates from Microsoft and computer hardware manufacturers. They are constantly finding bugs, issues and in-compatibilities with software and accordingly release driver updates which fix these issues.

How to fix it: Update your computer’s drivers with the latest provided by your hardware manufacturers. You can download and run DriverCure, which connects to a database of drivers and installs the correct drivers for your computer.

Windows registry contains entries which are no longer valid and slowing your computer down

Very similar issue to having a fragmented hard drive, the Windows registry is an indexed list of every file and program installed on your computer. This indexed list gets fragmented over time just like your hard drive does and makes your computer take significantly longer to load programs up the more fragmented it is because it takes longer for it to find the correct registry entry required for it to load software programs.

How to fix it: Run PC Health Advisor’s registry cleaner function to restore the Windows registry and ultimately speed up your computer.

Spyware or malware are secretly lurking within your system

Today spyware and malware are a big issue of many computer problems, and they most certainly do slow computers down. An anti-virus these days is not enough to pick up spyware and malware and I recommend you have a dedicated software tool for this job. PC Health Advisor features the most up-to-date spyware and malware engine to tackle spyware and malware out there today and even tomorrow. Use PC Health Advisor to scan your computer for spyware and malware.

You haven’t re-booted in a very very long time

It is important to restart or re-boot your computer at least once a week. A restart flushes your computer with junk that has accumulated within the memory and virtual memory. This gets flushed after a restart and your computer starts up again fresh minus hidden nasties. Your computer is almost always noticeably quicker after a restart.

Time to Take Action Now

There you have it! Now you know the most common reasons as to why your computer is running so slow. The next course of action is of course to get these issues resolved and have your computer running smooth and faster like it once used to. I highly recommend using PC Health Advisor to complete these tasks. PC Health Advisor is the Windows optimization tool that currently leads the industry; it is an all-in-one tool that has been speeding up computers since 2006! It is a powerful Windows optimization tool that makes speeding up and optimizing your Windows computer incredibly simple.

Remember, if you don’t take any action now or sometime soon, your computer will still remain painfully slow!

Fast PC Life is the self-proclaimed leader for reviews and recommendations on software that improve PC performance. We focus on reviews based on software programs which try to get the most out of your PC, for business, home and even play. Covering primarily software that speeds up PCs for Windows and Mac based computers. Fast PC Life reaches a savvy and discerning audience looking for trusted, expert advice.

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